MMA

33

"A little contortion is a dangerous thing."

1

These are examples, chosen at random, of the heavy-witted puns and scurrilous doggerel to which the Queen was constantly subjected. Jehaz, a trifle ashamed perhaps of his own impetuous infatuation for this nonentity, does not seem to have exerted himself in her defence beyond a few half-hearted wholesale executions and one general massacre of minor poets, known in Sheban history as Groundhog Day.2 Shenanikin could undoubtedly have helped her, but there is no evidence in any of his correspondence that he was ever aware of her existence, or she of his.

Things went from bad to worse. Another palace insurrection was impending. Came that terrible night when the flower of the court gathered before the Queen's apartments for the purpose of sharpening their scimitars upon her doorstep.

"Death to the Scythian!" the corridors rang with their bloodthirsty cries. "Shimhi's crown is tumbling down, my fair lady!" 3

It was on this occasion that one of the Queen's Shimhis, as her ladies-in-waiting were called, put

1 Talmud, Diaries of a Court Physician, tablet 28.

The M

the

nich

ifle

ion

Zed

zed

of

d

ve

is

er

e

33

her little finger in the latch and held the mob at bay.

Shimhi slipped out of the palace, disguised as a swan feeder, and was never heard from again. With her, as sole reminders of her lost greatness, she took twelve strings of pearls, nineteen ropes of diamonds, twenty-eight chains of chrysolite and a few other unconsidered trifles, amounting in all to some three million shekels. Behind her she left a six months old baby, and a brief letter to the King which has fortunately been preserved in toto.

"Dear Sir," she wrote. "You made me what I should be today, satisfaction I hope you got it. Goodbye and God bless you." 1

Gorton, and Hornblower, and even Transom, all unite to condemn her in the bitterest terms, gibbeting her upon the pages of history as an unnatural mother and an absconding Queen. Under the circumstances this appears a little harsh. In her desperate plight it was a question with her of her jewels or her child, and she chose the jewels, which on sober consideration would seem to have been an excellent choice as being more readily portable and infinitely more durable. Whosoever will, let him cast away the first precious stone!

'Annals of Sheba, cylinder 2046.

Poor little misunderstood acrobat Queen! What was she? A street sparrow, a dancing doormouse, an innocent tumblebug in a gilded cage. A vacant chair. A song at twilight. Nothing more.

So let her stand before the judgment of posterity.

9

The baby, a girl, was taken to Salhin, to grow up beside her four little half-brothers.

Such were the lineage, parentage and birth of the child who was to be known in years to come as Balkis, Queen of Sheba.

CHAPTER II

BABY BALKIS

1

At a very early age the little Queen-to-be gave evidence of two pronounced peculiarities. She was ambidextrous, and double-jointed throughout. In addition it became apparent, as the light burden of her young years began to accumulate, that she was destined to be deliriously beautiful, in the fatal Scythian style every characteristic of which— alabaster skin, jade colored eyes, fiery red or "salamander" hair, tiny hands and feet-she possessed to a bewildering degree. Aside from that she was a romp, a hoyden, a madcap, a hotspur and a tomrig of the first water. So much so that when it came time to furnish a name for her, to supplement her royal cryptonym which might of course never be uttered above a whisper, the caconym of Balkis was chosen, meaning Tomboy.

If any evidence of her vagarious nature other than the testimony of eye-witnesses were needed Balkis herself furnishes it in striking fashion. Perhaps more than any ruler in history, certainly with infinitely greater prolixity than other contemporary sovereigns, she rushed into script on all occasions and on all topics in a passion for self

revelation which proves a veritable cranberry bog for her biographers, embarrassing though it may have been for her relatives, friends and associates whom she does not spare in her autobiography.1

Of her extraordinary diaries there are four hundred and sixty-two volumes extant, half of which must be read with the aid of a mirror since, on account of her ambidextrousness, it was her practice to write two volumes at a time, one forward and the other backwards. And on the subject of her youthful escapades she is very explicit, and disarmingly shameless.

"Salhin Palace," she says once,2 "was designed in what is called the Sheban manorial style, with roofs and turrets, and tin camels on top of them. Such a beautiful structure.

I was a child of the sand dunes and quite untamable.

I rode my camel-foal up the front stairs and tried to teach the Governor's high stepping Bactrians to jump, which they, poor knock-kneed creatures, were not in the least prepared to do now that I look back on it. I climbed our perilously

1 Balkis of Sheba, An Autobiography, translated from the original MS. by the Pan-Arabian Society.

'Childhood, vol. 12.